Spider-Who
by spiderstan0spiderstan
Summary: There are a lot of bad things one could find in a teenager's bedroom. A super-suit is among the worse. May stumbles upon Peter's biggest secret. (MCU-verse)


The penny never really dropped for May. It wasn't a single moment of realisation, more of a slow and horrible slide into knowing.

She'd suspected something, of course, when Peter started coming home with bruises and odd excuses, but she'd trusted him.

She held up the strange, plasticy suit and glared at it, trying to process.

Her kid was Spider-man.

Her fifteen-year-old kid wasSpider-man.

A couple days ago, her kid had been fighting with the Avengers.

It just didn't mesh well at all. Peter was in mathletes. He built PCs and played with molymods. He still slept with the teddy he'd been given as a baby. He couldn't be a superhero. He couldn't even pack for himself; he'd tried to take six Dune books and no socks on a week-long maths camp.

Why hadn't he told her?

Was he scared of her?

He'd gone to Germany; she'd seen it on the news. He'd fought Captain America. He could have died. Captain America had dropped a jetway on her child.

She was ready to personally chase down America's Hero and tear off his star-spangled balls.

Rationally, she knew that he - and the other grown adults on the opposing team - probably hadn't known. Tony Stark wasn't the type to tell anyone anything. But she could hardly just be okay with this.

Peter would be home in just under ten minutes.

May threw the suit- his suit, in his size, made to measure- on to his bed, and went to make a cup of coffee.

She was sitting on the couch, sipping coffee and feeling like a terrible parent for not noticing- who wouldn't notice, even if it made no sense?

That explained the dip in his grades. His performance in school had been almost oscillating, equal parts A*s and Es. She'd thought, depression, rebellion, secret girlfriend, something that made sense for a teenager- this was worse. New York was dangerous, and other superheroes could be near enough deadly.

By the time Peter got back, May was on her second cup of coffee. He didn't pick up on the atmosphere whatsoever; he made a beeline for the kitchen and started eating Nutella with a spoon.

"Peter." She wasn't yelling athim, but he came running anyway, frantically trying to swallow his mouthful of Nutella. "I know. I found your suit."

"It's not mine." Peter managed. "I'm, a, a, a decoy. So nobody knows where the real Spider-man keeps his stuff."

Peter was a near-prodigy in many ways, but he had to be the worst liar May had ever known.

He'd been raised cto be honest.

"I'm not angry with you," May said. "Not for… doing this, really. I'm angry that you lied to me about it."

Peter winced.

"And that you left the country without my permission, and thought it would be a good idea to fight the Avengers." May continued. "And about your grades. And hiding whatever happened to make this possible, just- why? Why wouldn't you tell me?"

Peter looked from her to the floor and back. He set his Nutella down on the shoe rack.

"I'm sorry…" He began. "It was- well, I got these...powers, and, and, and, I, after…"

He started up with the horrible, shallow, halting pattern of breathing that had meant 'I'm about to cry' until he was twelve and 'I'm trying really hard not to cry' ever since. May felt like a considerably worse parent than before.

"I could have-" Peter cut himself off in the middle of a sentence. " I have to help people! I can, and I want to and I should , 'cause, when, when I don't, people get shot !"

"Oh, Peter , no… " May stood up and pulled him into a hug. Tears were budding in her eyes, now, too. God, she was awful with situations like this."That wasn't your fault and you know it."

Peter clung, taking fistfuls of her shirt like he used to do when he was little.

She remembered when he was very young and very sick and constantly crying for her to do something, even when she couldn't- this was a similar feeling. Every element of his voice and body language just screamed help me.

"But I could have stopped it." he told her shoulder, very quietly. "I should of."

Dear god.

She'd heard of survivor's guilt. But this was too much.

"Is it your job to stop stuff like that happening?" She asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

Peter leant back to look her in the eye.

" Yes, " He insisted.

"Are you getting paid? 'Cause we could really use a second salary around here."

Peter gave her a watery-eyed disapproving look.

"I'm- I'm volunteering, " He said. "I don't want anyone else to have to… go through what we did."

May couldn't help but hug him tighter; the kid was a miracle.

He gasped in pain and she let go immediately.

"What's wrong?" Germany, Germany, whatever had happened a day ago in Germany was worse than she'd thought. She was going to punch Tony Stark's face in, billionaire or no.

"Um," Peter looked somewhere between sad and sheepish. "I...might have, like, slightly broken some ribs a little?"

Scratch the punch-Tony-Stark's-face-in plan. She was going to shove the ironclad enabler into a trash compactor and leave him there to rot.

" Please don't ground me," Peter begged, reading her face.

"This is why this isn't your job," May said. "Police officers and firefighters and soldiers and other superheroes- they train, Petey, so stuff like this won't happen. So they can avoid getting takes practice. You can't just jump into being a superhero, no matter if you have powers or not."

"I didn't!" Peter protested. "It's been sixmonths! "

Six months. He'd been at this since before Christmas.

"I'm sorry I didn't stop you sooner." It was an impulsive statement but a true one. She hadn't noticed when he'd started out, then she'd been too caught up in her own grief to give him the attention he needed…

"So...I'm not grounded?" Peter sounded hopeful.

"Oh, you're grounded, Mister," May said. "Very grounded. Do I really need to list reasons why?"

"For how long?" Peter asked, and then, probably for sympathy, "Can I have an ice pack?"

"...Until you get your grades back on track." May walked over to the freezer and dug out a bag of frozen corn, which she wrapped in two tea -towels and handed over. Peter gingerly pressed it to his side. "And grounded extends to being spider-man, too. No… Spider-manning. Spidering-man. Don't."

"But…" Peter began.

"And adding to that, why shouldn't I take you to the hospital? Considering the broken bones ?"

How did you miss broken bones? How had she managed to do that? What the hell kind of parent didn't notice broken bones?

"I heal faster now. Like...six times faster, give or take," He said. " I'll probably be better by the end of the week, and Mister Stark said-"

" Speaking of Tony Stark." May could see Peter preparing to leap to his defense. "I need you to call him. And after that we're going to have a very serious talk about stranger danger , which I thought I taught you when you were five, but I guess not."

"I know what stranger danger is," Peter said. He took out a phone that they could never afford, thumbed through the contacts, and hit one.

"Put him on speaker," May told him.

"Peter?" Tony Stark, billionaire quasi-kidnapper, answered almost immediately. "What's up, why are you calling? This line is for emergencies ."

"Tony, this is May Parker." May held out her hand for the phone, which Peter handed over.

"You have a lot of explaining to do."

"About what? I linked you to the grant website, didn't I-"

"With all due respect, Mister Stark, cut the bullshit." Peter gave her a look of total and abject horror. She'd just sassed his lifelong hero. "You took my kid. To Saxony. To fight a super-soldier and a terrorist cyborg assassin. And you didn't even think to tell me. Explain. "

"He has amazing nonlethal technology. Kid's a genius," Tony said, like it was a logical excuse to bring a ninth-grader to a superhero war. "We had to apprehend, not kill. There was nobody else who could do what he can. And it was his choice to come, I didn't kidnap him."

"Peter can't legally 'choose' to see an R-rated movie," May snapped. "And you expected him to pick a side in one of the most complex political conflicts of our time."

"I can decide stuff." Peter huffed. "I'm not stupid "

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

"You can't sue me." Tony Stark warned. "Don't try."

"I can hate you. And ground Peter," May said. "And if I want to, I could easily tell the press about how you showed up in my home, locked yourself in a room with my teenage son and have been showering him in expensive gifts ever since and, hmm, I wonder why you would do that?"

"I'll get you a house. Or a lambo. Or put Peter through MIT." Tony offered. Bribery. "Honestly, you should be thankful he's got some sort of protection now, rather than running around in some goodwill onesie with no monitoring whatsoever. "

"However you're watching him, I want access," May said, slightly disgusted with Tony already.

"And he needs training . If you want my child on your team so badly, train him . And clue me in."

"Okay, that's doable." Tony Stark said. She could hear the irritating manufactured charisma. Every word was backhanded. "Want an app? I can totally make you a creepy spy app so you can watch your nephew's every move."

"I have a right to know if you're trying to abscond with him again," Peter was going through the oh-my-god-you're-the-most-embarrassing-parent-alive motions in her periphery, but May didn't care at that point. "You told me you were going upstate, not across the goddamn Atlantic!"

"His identity is a secret. He didn't want you to know," Tony sounded horribly blasé about the whole thing. May had never lost so much respect for someone in such little time.

"He. Is. My. Child ," She said. "Do you need me to talk slower? Can you not understand what that means?"

"Jesus, woman, he'd be doing it anyway," Tony said. "There's no stopping someone with a moral agenda like his. I equipped him as best I could, If that led to him fighting alongside me, that's his choice. I'm sorry for thinking he's competent enough to make decisions ."

May had always held a little bit of a bias against people who could literally bathe in money.

Tony Stark's money could fill several olympic swimming pools, and there was a definite correlation between wealth and slimy dickheadery, if he was anything to go by.

"Mister Stark-" Peter piped up, stepping closer to be heard. "Well, uh, thanks for respecting me but I wouldn't try and argue with Aunt May? Ever? You can't win ."

"Hi, Peter," Tony said. "Your unusually attractive aunt is overreacting. Please tell her she's overreacting."

May was going to become a superhero. She was going to pick up some alien technology or learn how to spin-flip people with her thighs, and she was going to kick Tony Stark's shiny, metal ass.

"You're overreacting," Peter said, still holding his improvised ice pack in place. "I'm fine. It's fine. Everything's fine. Can we still have the lambo?"

Tony had the audacity to laugh.

"When you can drive, maybe," He said.

Peter picked up his Nutella again. May took a deep breath.

"Look, Tony," She said. "It's not that I'm not insanely proud that Peter would even try to do what he does, or that I don't think it's good that he has better gear. Yours is a dangerous field, and this is my kid we're talking about. What would your parents think, if it was you?"

Peter winced a little. That was probably one of Tony Stark's many, many Raw Nerves, which the tabloids loved to poke.

"I'll text you my email address on this phone," Tony said. "We can...talk, okay? Peter's suit has GPS and impact sensors, so I can give you the feeds from those. And you can sit in on the first couple training sessions, which I've been planning for, because contrary to popular belief, I do have a soul."

"Okay," May said. "I want that in writing. Signed. And I'm still mad at you. I feel like you need it explained that I'm still mad at you."

"Ouch," The billionaire said. "You know-"

"Bye."

May hung up.

"Tha' was so mean ," Peter said, trying to sound coherent with a mouth full of Nutella. "Why?"

"Do you really need to ask me that?" May pocketed his phone. She shook her head slightly.

"Stop eating Nutella like that. I'll make you real food." One grilled cheese and four failed attempts to get Peter to stop eating chocolate-hazelnut frosting later, they were sitting on the couch and … recovering. Peter was halfway through his sandwich, pinning the slowly defrosting corn in place with his arm.

He looked so young , in his rolled-up jeans and baggy t-shirt. Too young to be out in combat. It hadn't been so long ago that he was obsessively watching his now-teammates on T.V. If she'd wanted to- and he'd let her- May could have picked him up and carried him away from the strange, dangerous world he'd gotten into.

"I need you to start from the beginning," She said. "How did you... get your powers?"

"Well," Peter began. "Remember that trip? To the bio labs? When you had to sign the permission slip in green glitter pen?"

It was daunting.

Her kid, out there on the streets, saving every life except his own.


End file.
